Sustainable Hygiene

for communities in need

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Soap with a mission.

Sundara recycles old hotel soap into new bars, giving them a second life. We hire local women to do this work, lifting them from poverty with fair wage livelihoods, and they distribute the soap to their communities while providing free hygiene education classes for vulnerable populations.

'Sundara' comes from the Sanskrit word beautiful.We believe that real beauty is what you give and teach to others.

The Problem.

Every year, 2 million children die of diseases - like diarrhea and pneumonia - that can be prevented by regular hand washing. Soap, the most basic form of medicine, unfortunately isn’t available to many of the world’s poorest.

At the same time, the hospitality industry throws away billions of bars of gently used soap into landfills every single year.

TheSolution.

Soap - combined with hand washing education - is the most cost-effective health intervention available today.

Did you know?

Children under 5 who wash with soap can preventpneumonia infection by 46%.

A $3.35 investment in hand washing brings the same benefits as an $11 investment in toilet construction, a $200 investment in water initiatives, and an investment of thousands of dollars in immunization. (Unicef)

Poor hygiene is responsible for 1 out of every 9 child deaths – that’s more than AIDS, measles and malaria combined.

Unilever estimates that there are 70 million people in India alone who have never used soap.

Our Impact

Through recycling soap, we’ve rescued thousands of kilograms of waste from ending up in overcrowded landfills – but more importantly we’ve brought soap to those who couldn’t afford it, given economic opportunity to unemployed women and seen increased rates of hand washing in all the communities we work in.

Our Approach

Sundara takes old soap bars that would have otherwise been tossed into landfills, and recycles them into new, hygienic bars of soap that are pathogen free and can not transmit disease. We incorporate community empowerment, female leadership and hygiene education in the process.